Re: Corn Prices

I was thinking if distiller's lost production capacity due to grain shortages during the normal distilling season, they could make up for it in the winter by sourcing corn from the southern hemisphere - or does a large distiller like Jack Daniels or Heaven Hill already distill year round?

Re: Corn Prices

I don't really think there is going to be a corn shortage. I think the food producers would like to have you think that. There is so much corn in storage it's not funny like chuck said one bad year is not going to have that much effect.

Normal is an illusion. What is normal to the spider, is chaos for the fly.

Re: Corn Prices

Originally Posted by sutton

I was thinking if distiller's lost production capacity due to grain shortages during the normal distilling season, they could make up for it in the winter by sourcing corn from the southern hemisphere - or does a large distiller like Jack Daniels or Heaven Hill already distill year round?

They all distill year round and corn is available year round. If all corn production suddenly stopped, there is quite a bit in storage. Maybe enough to last a year or more. That's the nature of a staple, the production of surpluses, that allows a steady supply. Sure, prices usually change at harvest, and some farmers have storage so they can hold out for better prices, but corn (and the other cereals) is not in any real sense a seasonal product.

Re: Corn Prices

Originally Posted by cowdery

They all distill year round and corn is available year round. If all corn production suddenly stopped, there is quite a bit in storage. Maybe enough to last a year or more. That's the nature of a staple, the production of surpluses, that allows a steady supply. Sure, prices usually change at harvest, and some farmers have storage so they can hold out for better prices, but corn (and the other cereals) is not in any real sense a seasonal product.

Re: Corn Prices

There's usually a summer shut down. How long it is depends on the distillery and its production needs. HH typically shuts down for just a couple of weeks. Four Roses is usually down for all of August. BT shuts down for August and September, usually. It's different for each distillery and changes from year to year, although right now just about everybody is making as much as they can. I don't think Jack Daniel's has a shut down, per se. It is certainly incorrect to say "they don't distill bourbon in the summer months" because they most certainly do.

Historically, distilleries didn't operate during the hotest months because they couldn't control the fermentation, but now with chillers they can go year round. Like many factories, they shut down because it's easier for everyone to take vacation at the same time, and sometimes they need to shut down for major maintenance, but otherwise they only shut down based on capacity and production requirements. So BT, because it has so much capacity, has relatively long shut downs, and they're even longer at Barton. HH may have longer ones down that they have their capacity up, same with Beam, but I'd be surprised if Maker's shuts down for more than two weeks, if that.

An emerging issue is tourism. With tourism growing in importance, distilleries may have to look at deliberately operating during the prime tourism months and shutting down at other times.

Re corn, they're now trying to get a waiver on the fuel additive mandate so they can cut down on fuel ethanol production when prices are so high and availability is getting tight. About 40% of the corn crop goes to ethanol. They can use the lowest quality stuff no one else wants, but it doesn't make much sense to subsidize fuel ethanol under these circumstances.

Re: Corn Prices

For reference, the cost of 195 proof bulk GNS is up $.75 / gallon. As the same efficency, an 80 proof bourbon would be $.31 / gal more expensive. Thus a 750 mL bottle would cost $.061 more to produce. The bourbon distillers are probably not as efficient as the GNS prodcuers on an ethanol gallon per corn bushel basis, but I can't imagine that the discrepancy is that great.